How did the newly-established PRC view and tackle the old problem of piracy from a socialist perspective? Focusing on a high-profile piracy case happened in Shanghai during the early 1950s, this paper shows that the state and party authorities, as well as the new leaders in Shanghai's publishing industry, started to see literary piracy not merely as a violation of copyright holder's private interests, but a crime committed by market-oriented publishers of being too self-interested. As PRC hadn't issued its copyright law, Shanghai Booksellers' Guild, the quasi legal institution which had been regulating copyright in Shanghai since 1905, still played a key role in handling piracy disputes in the city; in this case, the Guild, now under the control of pro-communist editors, attempted to promote a new kind of morality in Shanghai's publishing industry. They believed that piracy occurs because profit-driven publishers and editors misunderstood making money as the goal of publishing industry, thus the only way to stop piracy would be to correct this kind of market-oriented mentality and the book trade structure it was embedded in. They used this piracy case as a fuse to ignite a larger campaign to restructure and nationalize Shanghai publishing industry.